If there is anything that our modern culture gets totally wrong, it’s how to feed babies and properly introduce solid foods. Pediatricians, dieticians, and other “experts” are quick to recommend that the perfect first food for babies at about the age of 4-6 months is rice cereal.
Not only is this advice completely misguided, it is also extremely harmful to the long term health of the child. Such advice contributes greatly to the epidemic of fat toddlers and the growing childhood obesity crisis.
Rice cereal is not a healthy first food for babies
Rice cereal is an extremely high glycemic food. This means that it spikes the blood sugar rapidly. It also contains ample amounts of double sugar (disaccharide) molecules, which are extremely hard for an immature digestive system to digest. The small intestine of a baby mostly produces only one carbohydrate enzyme, lactase, for digestion of the lactose in milk. It produces little to no amylase, the enzyme needed for grain digestion.
Interestingly, avoidance of allergies is one of the reasons cited by pediatricians for using rice cereal as the first food! While rice may be gluten free, it is by no means disaccharide free. Thus, it can contribute to the development of allergies and other autoimmune disorders just the same as a gluten containing cereal such as wheat or spelt. This is why going “gluten free” does not solve digestive ailments in the majority of children with autoimmune issues linked to grain allergies.
This approach may reduce symptoms somewhat, but it does not solve the problem entirely. The disaccharide molecule is still present in high amounts in gluten free grains. A similarly hard to digest starch molecule is present in grain substitutes such as potato flour, arrowroot, bean flours, etc.
Rice Cereal Now, Weight Issues Later?
Why then, is rice cereal so very popular as a first food to feed babies? One reason is that it is so readily accepted by the baby (who wouldn’t like a food that spikes the blood sugar? It is a bit of a “high” after all) and it fills them up like a lead brick leading to longer and more frequent periods of sleeping and more passive behavior in general. Be aware that there are still some misinformed doctors that advise mothers of babies that do not sleep well to introduce rice cereal as early as 3 months old – sometimes right into the baby bottle if the tongue thrust reflex hasn’t yet disappeared preventing the baby from taking food off a spoon! This is a recipe for childhood weight problems if I’ve ever heard one.
If your baby zonks out right after eating on a frequent basis, this is a major clue that what the child has just eaten was not easily digested (this goes for breastfeeding too .. a poor diet that is not digested well by the breastfeeding Mother will result in toxins in her breastmilk which will have an opiate like effect on the child).
Dr. McBride’s book mentioned above discusses this huge issue of toxins from undigested food and gut pathogens in the breastmilk as well. The same goes for adults, by the way. If you get sleepy after eating, it’s because what you just ate isn’t getting handled very well by your gut. The body is basically compensating for the brick in your stomach by putting you to sleep so that a sufficient amount of energy can be diverted to digestion.
Even Health Canada recognizes the dangers of cereal as a first food for babies and recommends against it.
So What is the Right First Food for Babies?
A baby’s digestive system is much better equipped to handle fats and proteins than carbohydrates. For this reason, a wonderful first food for babies is a soft boiled egg yolk from a pastured hen. Take care to only use the yolk and not the egg white which contains difficult to digest proteins. For my own children, I started giving a taste of a soft boiled egg yolk from my own plate starting at about 4-6 months old. Just a taste! If the child is completely uninterested, then try again in a week or two.
If the child likes the little taste that you put on her tongue or lip, then give her two tastes the next day and three tastes the next day, gradually building up to the entire egg yolk. Never force the child to eat. Remember that egg yolk is an extremely rich food and force feeding any rich food can cause the child to vomit.
Benefits of Egg Yolk for Babies
Egg yolk from pastured chickens contain ample amounts of omega-3 fatty acids and natural cholesterol which are critical to a child’s mental development and may be lacking in breastmilk depending on the quality of the mother’s diet. Children who receive sufficient omega 3 fats in their diet tend to speak clearly and understand verbal direction from the parents at a very early age.
I just went back and looked at my children’s baby books and all 3 of them (even the boys) spoke short sentences by 15-17 months of age. First words (Mama or Dada) occurred around 7 months. While these sentences were very simple (“Get that”, “Don’t want that”, “More of this”) I have no doubt that getting ample omega-3 fats from their diet played a big part in their ease of communicating at an early age. The pronunciation was clear enough to be understood even by those outside the family too.
At 6 Months of Age
At about 6 months of age, grate a bit of raw, grassfed beef or chicken liver into the warm egg yolk for baby to eat. This mimics the traditional practice of African mothers who would chew raw liver and then give small amounts to their babies as a first food.
Make sure that the raw liver is frozen for a minimum of 14 days as recommended by the USDA to eliminate any risk of parasites. Mashed banana is also a wonderful carbohydrate to add around this time. Banana digests very easily due to the copious amounts of amylase present. When the enzyme is present in the food, there is no need for baby’s small intestine to produce it herself.
If you can’t source quality raw liver in your area, desiccated liver powder can be used instead.
At Age 10 Months
At the age of 10 months or so, add pureed meats, fruits and vegetables. Introduce one at a time to reduce any chance of a reaction. Best also to avoid high starch veggies like potatoes and sweet potato. These veggies contain very complex starch molecules. They are much more difficult to digest for baby than non-starchy vegetables. Take the time to make your babyfood at home with organic ingredients, and mash the veggies withgrassfed butter.
It is worth the effort! Organic jarred baby food is not only overpriced. It is microwaved, watered down and contains no healthy fats to facilitate absorption.
Consumption of veggies with a bit of healthy fat like butter increases mineral absorption tremendously! You can freeze your homemade baby food in ice cube trays. A quick thaw in a small sauce pan (not the microwave!) makes for a fast and nutritious meal.
Soups made with homemade broth rank as one of the most nutritious foods for babies at this age. The gelatin in the homemade broth is protective against any intestinal bugs. It facilitates digestion too so that baby absorbs as many nutrients as possible.
When Should Grains be Introduced?
It’s a good idea to delay introduction of grain based foods and starchy vegetables for as long as possible. Grains are the hardest foods to digest of all.
Some experts advise that a child pass his/her second birthday before eating these foods. Whatever you decide, it is wise to forgo them until well after the first birthday. Even then, the grains should be properly prepared. This means they are either sprouted, sour leavened or soaked to ensure maximum digestibility. This careful preparation breaks down some of the hard to digest starches, gluten and anti-nutrients such as phytic acid.
It will take every ounce of your will power to keep the grain based foods out of your child’s mouth until well after her first birthday. In fact, the longer you can delay, the better. Teething biscuits, cheerios, crackers, and bread are all favorite foods for moms to feed as soon as the child can sit up in a high chair and grab from a plate. The first thing most parents give a baby at a restaurant is bread from the bread basket.
Babies may love it, but don’t do it!
Resist the temptation to use these foods as a pacifier. Commit to offering only truly nourishing fare at such a young age. The time will come soon enough when your child will have more control over his/her food choices. Wisely use this time of complete control to make sure every calorie baby eats is nutrient dense and easily digested!
Skip the Fruit Juice!
On a final note, whatever you do, skip the fruit juice! Fruit juice from the store, even if organic, is just sugar water. All the nutrition, enzymes and probiotics has been pasteurized away. It just spikes the blood sugar and increase the risk of obesity.
Juice also kills a child’s appetite for hours, even a day or two. Many a Mom has told me that when she took away the fruit juice, within a few days, a picky eater suddenly started eating!
The one exception would be freshly pressed juice diluted with some filtered water. Fresh fruit juice is full of enzymes and nutrition and would be an acceptable drink for baby on occasion. This is acceptable after age 10 months or so.
Still unsure where to start? This video on how to prepare the best first food for baby can help too!
Sarah, thank you for your helpful blog! I’ve accessed it several times now for help with GAPS legal receipes, etc.
Could I ask for some advice on starting our son on eggs, if you have a moment? He is 6 1/2 months and we started solids just before 6 months (I wanted to exclusively breastfeed ’til 6 months but his physical therapist was concerned about his tongue moving more to the right than the left – we haven’t observed this at all – so we started solids a little early). I would LOVE to feed him eggs for the health benefits (although I’ve read beef is also high in choline), but I believe he’s allergic to eggs. I started doing a modified full GAPS diet (pretty much full GAPS but without ferments, dairy, and eggs) because of some possible autoimmune condition I ran up against four months postpartum and also because our son has horrible eczema. I noticed that it flared even more when we started GAPS because the diet is egg-heavy, but when I eliminated eggs, it got better. When we also tried boiled egg yolks, he got a flare and a horrible diaper rash. I strongly suspect he has a leaky gut (for me, too!), and we’ve been trying to give him homemade chicken meat broth when he can and also Baby Biotic (slurps both down!!) to help him heal. I want to make sure he has enough iron but don’t want to rely on cereals – we haven’t given him any rice cereal but have been doing some non-GMO oatmeal – he is still getting used to pureed beef and chicken and doesn’t really like them yet. He does like avocado.
Any suggestions? Thank you, Sarah!
I’m not Sarah, but yikes! It’s okay to not feed him eggs if he seems to be allergic to them!
My kids love slow-braised meats. I cook fatty cuts (pork shoulder/ribs, beef chuck roast, etc) low and slow all afternoon, and the meat just melts in your mouth. Delicious and easy! It’s so tender that my 11 month old has been able to gobble pieces for a few months now, even though she chews with a mouth full of gums!
With my first, I was very eager to introduce solids. This ended up with him weaning himself earlier than I had planned. With my 2nd, I waited as long as possible (9ish months) to feed her an ounce or so of what we were eating. It became hard to keep her away from our meals, because she was so interested in them, and could feed herself little bites.
She still nurses 4-5 times a day, and I’m going to continue nursing her as long as I can. And I’m pumping for my toddler so he can hopefully “catch up” what he missed by weaning earlier than 12 months.
I use cast iron for most meals (unless I want to use vinegar, tomato, or lemon juice), so iron is leeching in small amounts into our food, so I think we’re getting enough iron that way.
Hope this all gives you some ideas!
Thank you for this post. I have a few questions though. My 5 month old has been eating the soft boiled egg yolk for the last few weeks and loves it… but how often do you recommend it? He eats close to the entire yolk now during a feeding, along with 7 ounces of formula. I have also been giving him some avocado mashed up as well. How many feedings per day would you recommend for the egg yolk though ?
I think it is really important to note that not all babies can eat egg. I tried giving my baby soft boiled egg yolk after reading this post and ended up in the ER because it turns out, he is highly allergic to eggs, even through breastmilk. It is the one of the top food allergies which are cropping up more and more in young babies. Be careful what you feed your baby! Breastmilk is just fine.
It’s still best to feed your baby with natural healthy food, and not those commercialize cereal processed food. And I don’t agree in feeding a 3-month old baby with rice cereal to stuff them so they will sleep well, Breastfeeding is still best.
I’ve been looking all over and can’t seem to find a reliable source. Why is it that if we are breastfeeding, we are recommended to give our babies vitamins particularly vit D? Is it necessary and why or why not?
Here’s some info for you: http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/recommendations/vitamin_d.htm
Just wanted to add to the “discussion” that my 7-month-old just had egg yolk (soft boiled) for the first time, and has thrown up 3 times in the past 2 hours. Obviously something about it didn’t agree with her little tummy, so egg yolk is going to be shelved for a while. She’s successfully had banana, avocado, and has tasted beef broth, zucchini, celery, green bean (all whole and barely cooked – she used them as flavored teethers), and accidentally, bread (little stinker literally stole half of my roll from my hand while I was distracted with her big brother), and hasn’t had a negative reaction to any of those things. She has been exclusively breastfed, just got her first tooth, and is in the 90th percentile for height, and 75 percentile for weight. Mothers, please use your common sense and listen to your instincts when it comes to your kids, regardless of any new fads that charge into popularity.
I think you are mistaken. You have not offended me in the slightest. I tire of reading your comments, and usually stop after a couple sentences. My point is, what you are saying has no weight or significance to those of us who respect Sarah and this blog. That’s all 🙂 I just hope you can find something else to spend your time on.
So what do you feed an exclusively breastfed infant who is almost 10 months and is falling off the charts for weight? Avocado seems to give him issues, or maybe he is getting too much of it? How much do you give them? He isn’t fond of egg yolks, but we kep trying. And the fruits and veggies……I try to limit because of the low caloric intake they have, and he desperately needs calories. I think my milk supply is starting to drop, so keeping him only on breastmilk isn’t a good option. We have tried meats, but he isn’t very fond of those either- I keep trying. In desperation I even tried a little rice cereal, but he cannot tolerate that either. He is the fussiest, gassiest, most miserable baby when I eat anything with spice, and as I wrote, he just can’t handle most foods…….at almost 10 months. I just want to give up and give formula, I don’t know what to do anymore, and I’m so tired……he is my 4th and is taking up so much of my time from fussy/no sleep. WHY DO I HAVE SUCH TOUGH BABIES?????? 3 of my 4 have been awful. But I think he is probably the worst and I just don’t know what to do or what to feed him.
Heidi, myheart is breaking for you! Please, please, please, get a support structure around you. Find a church group or something to help and love you, regardless of what you believe. Maybe find a MOPS group in your area? Then demand answers and help from your pediatrician. Eating should be a joyful (even when messy and crazy with kids) experience, and if it is causing you so much stress, your little ones will also find it and stressful, and could make any problems they might have harder to solve. You CAN figure it out, because you are their mother and you love them fiercely. Feel free to contact me on my blog, even if you just need to vent.
I have read you blog with more that a little bit of alarm. What I find most upsetting is that you appear to promote yourself as an “expert” in so many areas, when truth be known, you are the very definition of a person who has just enough knowledge to be dangerous!
As an example let’s talk about just one part of the article “The Right Way to Feed Babies,” where you discuss rice cereal.
I find it interesting that you can find so many issues with a staple of baby’s diets that is used the world over. It is fascinating that you and a handful of others have found problems that hundreds of thousands of experts have not found for literally hundreds of years.
But then I read further is see where your lack of knowledge has so severely misled you.
You say “Not only is it an extremely high glycemic food (spikes the blood sugar) but it also contains ample amounts of double sugar (disaccharide) molecules, which are extremely hard for such an immature digestive system to digest. The small intestine of a baby mostly produces only one carbohydrate enzyme, lactase, for digestion of the lactose in milk. It produces little to no amylase, the enzyme needed for grain digestion.”
It is true that the baby’s digestion system produces very little amylase when compared to an adult. But have you ever considered why this may be so?
The fact is that amylase is also found in the mouth. In fact, in babies it is found in very large amounts. So much so that compared to an adult a baby actually does a better job of digesting grains than adults do!
I find many things on your blog disturbing and wish that you would limit yourself to discussing topics for which you have adequate formal education. I think you are doing far more harm than any good that could possible come from your work.
I did however find one little aspect of you blog quite amusing. I loved the fact that while I was reading the article on feeding babies there was a rotating ad off to the right promoting baby cereal.
Apparently your strange standards as to what is right does not extend to your taking money from the very companies you demonize.
Advertising is based on YOUR search profile and history, not the bloggers. What exactly do you think humans were fed prior to manufacturing and processed food? It’s pretty simple: whole foods grown in the earth and in the soil. That’s how we survived for the past 4,000+ years.
So it’s OK in your mind for a blogger to sell all control of what appears on their website.
I was doing research on breast diseases for work the other day. Now I should be subjected to ads from porn sites? And that would be OKd in your mind?
Amazing how low people’s standards can go.
Bloggers are allowed limited control over what types of advertising appears in relation to food, clothes or other genres of content. There are laws preventing solicitation of pornography, and bloggers may always exclude over 18 content from their websites. Feel free to do your own research of advertising practices if you have additional questions. I’m simply pointing out to you how these things work, and that your brash judgements of the author are invalid. Furthermore, don’t place assumptions and judgement upon my statements either. I made no comment about what was “ok” or “right”; I simply explained to you how advertising on blogs work, which you clearly don’t understand. Attacking my moral character by telling my I have low standards is not only an attack, but an insult, and is neither helpful nor argumentative in this discussion.
When is it ok to give babies actual rice? Not rice cereal! But just soaked brown rice? Should that also be postponed till molars or 2?